


Culmination

by schweet_heart



Series: Merlin Fic [116]
Category: Merlin - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Post-War, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dystopia, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Post-War, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 09:58:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14133708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: Arthur remembered nothing, but he also remembered everything.Written for Camelot Drabble Prompt #306: Saudade. Sequel toCalumnyandCelebrations.





	Culmination

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Raphale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphale/gifts).



> For Raphale, who wanted a happy ending :) Thanks for all your wonderful comments!

 

Arthur remembered nothing, but he also remembered everything.  
  
It was hard to explain. When he’d first seen Merlin in person, standing on the street outside his flat on the night of Arthur’s birthday, it had been—visceral. The shock, the recognition. Only when Arthur had tried to place him, to figure out how Merlin must have fitted into his life before the war had torn everything apart, did he realise that the two of them had never met, and that he’d just opened his door to a total stranger.  
  
“We’re having a party,” he’d said, though Merlin had looked at him like he had already guessed. “There’s plenty to go around, if you want to come in.”  
  
Even now, he couldn’t explain why he had done it. Generosity was a dangerous impulse, he had learned that much the hard way, and attraction was a weapon that could so easily be misused. The war itself might have been over, but the world was still dangerous; there was every chance the man was a disgruntled mage or an unhappy Knight, come to take his revenge on Uther Pendragon’s son. Arthur had done his part for the Rebellion, had even been—if he admitted it to himself—instrumental in bringing his father down, but for that same reason he had made enemies, players on both sides who would like nothing more than to see him dead. He had made so many people angry for so long that sometimes he wondered how he could still be alive after everything he’d done.  
  
Merlin did not look angry. He looked like a stray cat, twitchy and feral, more used to the sting of a boot than the touch of human kindness. Perhaps that was why Arthur was so drawn to him: he looked like Arthur felt, as if it were sometimes all he could do to pick himself up every morning and keep going in the teeth of everything the world had become. He looked as if the war had stolen something from him in its last moments, and he no longer held out any hope of ever getting back.  
  
Arthur wasn’t the only one who saw it, he could tell. Gwen fussed over Merlin like a broody hen with an injured chick, and even Gwaine seemed to take to him immediately in spite of himself.  
  
“He’s like the little brother I never had,” he confided to Arthur when the two of them were cleaning up after the party. “I can’t help but feel like we’ve met before.”  
  
Deja vu had never been as uncommon in Arthur’s life as it should have been—Morgana had teased him once that he was developing the Sight, but it was never the future he saw, just the past. When the cafes had still been open, before the capital fell, he had once walked into a coffee shop he had never seen before and rattled off his favourite order from memory. He remembered movies he had never seen, music he had never listened to, and sometimes in the early morning, before he was properly awake, he remembered what it felt like to have another body lying next to his, to be kissed slowly awake by a mouth that smiled whenever it said his name.  
  
Morgana was dead now—had been killed in a bombing raid a couple of years before—but he thought she would have liked Merlin. Perhaps she would have been able to explain why, when Arthur looked at him, he felt grounded in a way he hadn’t done in years, or why Merlin fitted so well at Arthur’s side, as if he’d always been there, so that it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to ask him to stay.  


 

  
+

  
  
The first time Arthur kissed Merlin, Merlin let out a hiss like a scalded cat and fled, slamming the door on Arthur’s startled apologies. Arthur was certain he’d ruined everything—hell, he didn’t even know if Merlin was gay—until he followed Merlin out of the flat and found him sitting on the front doorstep, face buried in his hands and his shoulders shaking with sobs.  
  
“Merlin?”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“I think that’s meant to be my line.” Arthur sat down next to him, far enough away that Merlin wouldn’t feel crowded but close enough that he could bump the man with one shoulder, and said softly, “Are you okay?”  
  
Merlin scrubbed at his face. “Before the war,” he said haltingly, “there was—someone.”  
  
“Someone you loved?”  
  
“Someone I lost,” Merlin corrected. His eyes were wide as he stared at Arthur, but unfocused, like he was seeing someone else in Arthur’s place. “I just—I can’t seem to get over that. I’m sorry.”  
  
“That’s okay.” Tentatively, Arthur put a hand on his back, stroking the long ridge of his spine and feeling the shuddering intake of Merlin’s breath. “We’ve all lost people. It’s natural to grieve.”  
  
Merlin’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Still. I’m sorry.” He ran his knuckles over Arthur’s cheek, gentle and somehow familiar, and without quite meaning to Arthur found himself telling Merlin about Morgana, how she used to look at the world slightly differently than most people; how she had saved nearly everyone in her building before she died.  
  
“I still miss her, you know?” he said, and Merlin nodded, leaning companionably against Arthur’s shoulder. It had started snowing at some point during Arthur’s story, but the two of them were sitting in their own tiny bubble of warmth, and it took Arthur a moment to realise that it was Merlin’s doing. Because Merlin had _magic_.  
  
“Is this okay?” Merlin asked, seeing Arthur’s face. Arthur could only nod, his throat closing over, and he hoped Merlin would put it down to the strangeness of the moment and not what it really was: the fact that it felt like he had already known.  


 

  
+

  
  
The second time they kissed, Merlin was the one who started it, leaning over on the couch one evening to press their lips together. When he drew back, Arthur said, “Are you sure?” and Merlin smiled.  
  
“I want to be with you,” he said. “However you’ll have me.”  
  
It was a strange thing to say, considering it had been Arthur who had kissed him first, but Arthur was too distracted to pursue it at the time. Instead, he concentrated on touching Merlin, stripping off his clothes and pressing him down against the bed, kissing every part of him that he could reach. This, too, was familiar, like a secret Arthur had somehow forgotten, the pale arc of Merlin’s throat against the pillows, the way it felt to be sheathed completely inside him. Merlin’s legs were wrapped around his waist and his head thrown back, and the truth was, Arthur had been in love with him ever since that first day; since before they’d even met. It was only that it had taken him this long to admit it to himself.  
  
“Who was it?” Arthur asked him later. “That night, on my birthday—who were you looking for?”  
  
“You,” Merlin said, his mouth pressed hot and damp against Arthur’s shoulder. “I was looking for you.”  
  
And, strangely enough, Arthur believed him.

 


End file.
